Baby, Let's Play House Part 39

"I have a serious message for the world," he told her. "I have powers, Joyce, that I don't go bragging about. I could announce them to the world."

"Why don't you?" she asked.

"People aren't ready for me to announce that yet."

When Elvis started messianic talk like that around Dr. Nick, the physician thought it was more of a game, "a conversation piece, something he would do to entertain himself and others." A couple of the guys thought Elvis really believed he could heal people. But Dr. Nick was sometimes there when he'd do the laying on of hands: "He'd wink at you, like, 'I really don't believe in all of this, but I'm going through the motions and saying these things.' "

Whether or not he had "powers," he was a master planner at covering his tracks. That January, in Vegas, he was particularly adept, bringing Sherry Williams in as soon as Joyce flew out. She spent most of the month of February with him there, where he gave her a TLC TLC pendant. He also shared the A & D ointment he used to keep his lips soft, because "we'd kiss so pa.s.sionately that I'd get the worst razor burn on my cheeks. It hurt so much, but I loved it." He never forced any drugs on her and paid off her car when she refused to let him buy her a new one. "He was a huge impact on my life, all positive and fun. Nothing he ever said or did was negative toward me in any way." pendant. He also shared the A & D ointment he used to keep his lips soft, because "we'd kiss so pa.s.sionately that I'd get the worst razor burn on my cheeks. It hurt so much, but I loved it." He never forced any drugs on her and paid off her car when she refused to let him buy her a new one. "He was a huge impact on my life, all positive and fun. Nothing he ever said or did was negative toward me in any way."

When still other girls came in, Sherry stayed in his suite on the twenty-ninth floor. "I had very mixed feelings about it . . . for a sheltered, eighteen-year-old girl. If it wasn't me, it was going to be someone else, so I rationalized it." At first, she didn't know about the other girls he had there at the same time. She was always told it was Priscilla. "I was very naive. But I don't begrudge him for that. If anybody could get away with it, it was Elvis!"

She would go back in August and then again when he returned to Vegas the following year. All together, she saw more than fifty of his shows. One time he sang "Just Pretend" and pointed over to her booth. Another time, he sang one of their special songs for her, Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Until It's Time for You to Go," a lover's ballad about an affair that can never grow into a real relations.h.i.+p.

He was still thinking about Ann-Margret, who was wrestling with her own demons now. Suffering from depression, she was hurtful to her husband and her mother, and her social drinking had slipped into alcoholism. Seeing Elvis at her shows, sitting in the back booth, or coming onstage, doing a knee slide and stopping just at her feet, didn't help. now. Suffering from depression, she was hurtful to her husband and her mother, and her social drinking had slipped into alcoholism. Seeing Elvis at her shows, sitting in the back booth, or coming onstage, doing a knee slide and stopping just at her feet, didn't help.

That February 1971 she came into Vegas a few days early for her engagement, and Elvis invited her and Roger to a party at his suite, where he told her to stand perfectly still, and then demonstrated karate chops all around her face to show off his prowess. She knew that "a mistake of a mere millimeter could kill me, injure me severely, at the least. But I trusted him implicitly." Then she felt a breeze as he reeled off several punches. When he finished, he shook his head.

"You know, you're crazy," he told her, his voice full of so many emotions.

She smiled. "So are you."

Before long, he'd accidentally break another guest's ankle with a karate kick and, in the recording studio, send a gun flying out of Red's hand and straight through Chip Young's handmade guitar.

In the middle of March Priscilla flew to California to supervise the continuing redecoration of the Monovale house, while Elvis went to Nashville to meet Felton Jarvis at RCA's Studio B. Felton needed a lot from him this time-a pop alb.u.m, a holiday LP, a gospel record, and some singles-and hoped they would have a marathon session like last time. But it wasn't to be. He had folk songs on his mind, especially Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." And at 1:30 of the Monovale house, while Elvis went to Nashville to meet Felton Jarvis at RCA's Studio B. Felton needed a lot from him this time-a pop alb.u.m, a holiday LP, a gospel record, and some singles-and hoped they would have a marathon session like last time. But it wasn't to be. He had folk songs on his mind, especially Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." And at 1:30 A.M. A.M., normally a productive time for him, he called off the session. He was having increasing pain in his eye, he said, probably just a flare-up of that infection from December.

When it worsened the next day, he called Dr. Nick, who flew in with Dr. David Meyer, an ophthalmologist. Dr. Meyer first treated Elvis at his hotel and then admitted him to Nashville's Baptist Memorial Hospital. His diagnosis: iritis, probably a constancy from the dye he used to color his eyelashes, Dr. Nick thought, and secondary glaucoma.

Barbara Leigh came to visit him, flying in from California and staying in the doctors' quarters when she wasn't lying right in the hospital bed with him. "I held his hand while they shot him in the eyeball, but I looked the other way. He was brave and didn't make a peep." The very word glaucoma glaucoma made him think he was going blind, so Barbara understood when he flew in girlfriends one at a time to stay with him. Later that spring, he invited her to Graceland. made him think he was going blind, so Barbara understood when he flew in girlfriends one at a time to stay with him. Later that spring, he invited her to Graceland.

She loved sharing that world with him, seeing all his old Memphis hangouts, and walking the Graceland grounds, though he scared her playing chicken on the go-karts with the guys. Like Minnie Mae, who swore she heard noises coming from Gladys's ghost, and Priscilla, who had sensed Gladys's spirit when she found racks of her clothing in the attic, Barbara perceived Gladys around her, first in the dining room, but even more so upstairs in Elvis's rooms where her picture stood on a table.

"I felt her. Her presence was always there. Elvis spoke mostly of her when we were alone in his bedroom." It was there, under the Naugahyde ceiling with the TVs built in above his bed that he shared most everything with his girlfriends, in his private time away from the boys. "He said Gladys had told him he would marry a brown-eyed girl, and that he knew she would have liked me."

He handed out Placydils to her for sleep, but she didn't want them and hid some of them in the sofa. One time when they were together, he'd given her a gray pill for a headache, and it made her intensely ill.

Joyce, too, visited Graceland that spring. The same day that Barbara went back to California after Elvis's glaucoma scare in Nashville, Joyce came from the opposite end of the country and then flew with him to Memphis. With all the medical equipment now set up in Lisa Marie's room, it was Joyce who held his hand and flinched while Dr. Meyer put the needle in his eye.

He was incoherent nearly her whole visit, but the only part that really scared her was the oxygen tank in the room. "I couldn't understand why there was an oxygen tank for an eye problem. The doctor showed it to me and I thought, 'Oh, my G.o.d, I hope I don't have to use this thing.' "

Elvis wore a black patch for a while, smoking marijuana to alleviate the pressure in his eye, and canceled his immediate touring plans. Joyce came back to Tennessee to see him on May 21, flying again into Nashville, where he was completing a weeklong recording session. But he awakened in pain the next day in their hotel room, complaining of stomach cramps, and insisted on flying home to Memphis. They drove straight to Dr. Nick's office from the airport, and suddenly, to Joyce, "He was like brand-new."

At the time, Elvis seemed to be suffering only from irritable bowel syndrome, an uncomfortable intestinal dysfunction that can largely be managed through diet, exercise, and supplements. But it was just the first presentation of a far more serious problem: He had a premorbid condition, a congenital megacolon, or an abnormal enlargement that would soon be revealed as "tremendous in size," in Dr. Nick's words, three to four times normal in diameter. Eventually, the organ would lose much of its nerve enervation and ability to function.

He had been an outpatient in Palm Springs earlier that month for his fourth wedding anniversary, and more and more, Palm Springs would become a place where Elvis threw all caution to the wind. At some point that year, probably that summer, the guys held one of their typical weekend orgies, and one of the female guests later sent a letter to the house addressed to "Lizard Tongue." Priscilla found it, "went ballistic," Sonny says, and called Joe in Vegas, insisting on talking with Elvis. Joe told her he was asleep, and when Elvis called her back, he turned the tables on her, chewing her her out, and saying the letter had really been for Sonny, not him. Priscilla apologized and telephoned Sonny's new bride to tell her that her husband was fooling around. out, and saying the letter had really been for Sonny, not him. Priscilla apologized and telephoned Sonny's new bride to tell her that her husband was fooling around.

During big arguments such as that, Joe saw that "he played the tough part: 'Hey, you don't like it? Here's the door.' A couple of times, he got in fights with her and some of the later girls and said, 'You can take your clothes and leave.' Elvis was very good about being on the defensive whenever he got in trouble, and he was great when it came to screaming and yelling. It frightened them to the point that they wouldn't say any more. He had a real bad temper."

Priscilla's way of dealing with it all was just to continue building her own life in California with Lisa Marie. She had a new set of friends, and she was taking karate now from Ed Parker. When she was in Memphis, she'd keep up her technique with Kang Rhee at his studio on Poplar Avenue, where Elvis studied tae kwon do. Priscilla also continued her dance sessions while in Memphis, frequently at Sally O'Brien's studio behind the Davis YMCA in Whitehaven. Pat West, Red's wife, went with her, Priscilla driving and taking Lisa Marie to play with Sally's daughter, Paige, who was Lisa's same age.

Sally considered Priscilla to be "a lovely dancer, and missed few cla.s.ses. . . . I found her to be a very warm and kind person. I think she just needed to have some normal time and conversation away from the spotlight."

It was normalcy that Priscilla craved the most. Some of her favorite moments with Elvis were the "nights when he'd come into Lisa's bedroom-he always called her 'Yeesa'-and read her nursery rhymes on the bed."

But those times grew fewer and fewer. One night in California, Elvis looked across the living room and realized Priscilla could do quite well without him.

"My," he said. "You've grown."

And that, Priscilla says, "is the moment we both knew the marriage was over."

For a while, she remained the token wife, tucked away at home while Elvis indulged himself with a plethora of girlfriends. Finally she did what she felt she had to do. "I took a lover. It was my way out." He was, of course, Mike Stone, the karate champ she and Elvis had seen in Hawaii.

The guys knew about her affair before Elvis did. Henrietta, the maid at the Holmby Hills house, told Red that Mike was spending a lot of time there. Then three-year-old Lisa Marie inadvertently ratted them out. Mike had taken them camping, she told new entourage member James Caughley, and "I saw Mommy and Mike wrestling in their sleeping bag on the beach. They wrestled all night." Finally, Sonny caught them in the shower together on Monovale.

n.o.body really blamed her, especially not Joe. "She wanted some real love that she wasn't getting from her husband. She was at home going out with the girls, and then started to take karate with Mike, and boom, it all changed."

But Priscilla would wait for the right time to tell her husband that she had chosen another man over him.

He was already acting like a man who knew, but even if he didn't, he began moving farther out on the edge, taking bigger chances and demonstrating increasingly reckless regard for his own life. But there were still glimmers that he held out hope. In May he renewed contact with Daya Mata at the Self-Realization Center, and soon he would invite Larry Geller back into the fold. For a short period, he looked into Scientology, the religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard. farther out on the edge, taking bigger chances and demonstrating increasingly reckless regard for his own life. But there were still glimmers that he held out hope. In May he renewed contact with Daya Mata at the Self-Realization Center, and soon he would invite Larry Geller back into the fold. For a short period, he looked into Scientology, the religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard.

While he ultimately dismissed Scientology as cultish and money grubbing ("He stayed away from Scientology like it was a cobra," says Lamar), it ultimately brought about his curiosity regarding actress Peggy Lipton. He'd heard she was spiritually curious, and he thought he might connect with her on several levels. He'd loved her cool reserve on The Mod Squad, The Mod Squad, even as it scared him. even as it scared him.

Two of Peggy's actress friends, Janet and Sh.e.l.ly, were seeing him at the same time and suggested she meet him, even as they warned her that he was damaged and fragile. Something about him fascinated her-she had idolized him growing up and called him "the sacred monster of rock and roll."

Joe placed the call, and in July 1971 Elvis got on the phone and invited her to his first engagement at Del Webb's Sahara Tahoe at Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

"He kissed like a G.o.d," Lipton wrote in her 2005 memoir, Breathing Out, Breathing Out, "but that was about it. He didn't feel like a man next to me-more like a boy who'd never matured." "but that was about it. He didn't feel like a man next to me-more like a boy who'd never matured."

Elvis came for her in a private plane, a Bach 111 twin-engine jet he'd chartered with a full-time pilot to get over his fear of flying. From the moment she stepped aboard, she knew it was a mistake: "Sitting in the cabin in full white regalia complete with sungla.s.ses, rings, and rows of gold chains . . . Elvis looked like an action figure of himself."

He immediately offered her jewelry from a myriad of blue cases, which put her off, as it seemed too practiced. But she accepted a square ring with little diamonds, rubies, and sapphires "that you could move around to form any letter." The one he gave her had a P P on it, and she didn't know if he meant it for "Presley" or "Peggy." But he on it, and she didn't know if he meant it for "Presley" or "Peggy." But he was was funny and charming, and she was surprised to find him "smart and considerably savvy, despite his hillbilly ways." All the same, he was just too otherworldly and theatrical. What in h.e.l.l was she doing there? funny and charming, and she was surprised to find him "smart and considerably savvy, despite his hillbilly ways." All the same, he was just too otherworldly and theatrical. What in h.e.l.l was she doing there?

She'd brought along cocaine to get through it, and after they rolled around on the bed in heavy petting, they made love. "Or tried to," she wrote. "Elvis knew he was s.e.xy; he just wasn't up to s.e.x. Not that he wasn't built, but with me, at least, he was virtually impotent. . . . When he couldn't consummate it, he became embarra.s.sed and went into the bathroom. I knew he felt badly, because he left me a poem scrawled on a torn-off sc.r.a.p of paper on my pillow."

After his show, they tried again, but then they gave up. He had too many drugs in him to perform, and then each morning, a doctor came and gave him a shot to help him sleep. He wanted her to have one, too. But it scared her. "Had I taken the shot, I'm sure I would have either died or pa.s.sed out for days. These were heavy chemical c.o.c.ktails, and Elvis was seriously into them."

It was then she realized that the prerequisite for being with him was to get as stoned as he was. And all she wanted to do was run. One terrifying night, loaded up on his pharmaceutical escort to slumber, Elvis fell into a heavy stupor and woke up violently gagging and choking. Peggy pulled him into a sitting position, but he continued to struggle.

"Oh, my G.o.d, I thought, he's going to choke to death," Lipton wrote. "I punched him firmly on the back and he made a final heave. I frantically turned on the light. He was white as a sheet but still breathing. In his lap, all over his silk pajamas, was vomit filled with . . . maybe fifty or seventy-five capsules and pills of every description . . . along with the contents of last night's meal." At the apex of the crisis, "He called for his mother. He sat there like a baby, wailing for her. I cleaned him up and held him until he fell back to sleep . . . while the sun tried desperately to enter the curtained and darkened bedroom."

After that, she quit taking his calls. The way he lived was just too frightening, and besides, she had enough problems trying to curtail her own cocaine use. "I wasn't going to be able to save him-n.o.body was."

There were other close calls about the same time. During the Tahoe engagement, he picked up a teenage girl named Page Peterson who sat in the second row with her mother. She wore no makeup and was precisely the sort of nondrinking, nonsmoking innocent that Elvis couldn't resist. Sonny brought her backstage, and inexplicably, her mother let her stay with Elvis for much of the engagement. He gave her pills to keep up his hours.

One night after the show, he took her to Palm Springs. He was drinking large doses of Hycodan, a narcotic, a.n.a.lgesic cough syrup, and serving it to Page in champagne gla.s.ses. She had a headache, and Elvis gave her pills to ease the throb in her temples. That night, they both nearly died. When Sonny found them the next day, the room was freezing, and Elvis's breathing was erratic. The Hycodan bottle was almost empty.

"Boss! Boss, snap out of it!" Sonny yelled and shook him by the shoulders. "Wake up, Elvis!" He made a moaning sound, so Sonny moved on to Page. She let out a short rasp, but when Sonny shook her, she didn't come to, nor when he slapped her face hard. Charlie called for Dr. George Kaplan, one of Elvis's regular suppliers, who arrived within minutes.

A shot of Ritalin brought Elvis around, but Dr. Kaplan made no promises about Page. At the hospital, she was placed in intensive care.

"I told her not to drink that much," Elvis said. His voice sounded guilty, Sonny thought, and he paced the floor and sent a Bible verse to the hospital. The guys called John O'Grady and a contact with the Palm Springs police to keep the cops at bay. They came up with a plan that if she died, Charlie would take the rap. "He'd say she was his date, and he'd given her the stuff," Marty reports.

Colonel Parker went into damage control, getting everybody out of Palm Springs and arranging to pay $10,000 to the ambulance crew for their silence. Elvis picked up Page's medical bills, but though he talked to her on the phone several times, he didn't want to see her again. Still, she and her mother came to Vegas. "I'm sorry to say that Page wasn't the same person," Sonny wrote in his memoir, Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business. Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business. "Her personality wasn't as radiant as before." After Elvis's death, the episode would be reported in the addendum papers to the Drug Enforcement Agency's investigation of his addiction. "Her personality wasn't as radiant as before." After Elvis's death, the episode would be reported in the addendum papers to the Drug Enforcement Agency's investigation of his addiction.

When Joyce attended his Vegas engagement in August-the International Hotel was now the Las Vegas Hilton-she was ticked off not to have been invited to Tahoe. She thought that Elvis was punis.h.i.+ng her. She'd overslept on Placydils when she was at Graceland and raced out for her plane, leaving him alone in bed. But all was forgiven. He had the flu, or at least Vegas Throat, and although he'd seen Dr. Sidney Boyer for it, he wanted to be babied. That led to a natural subject, and Joyce inquired about Lisa Marie, and about Priscilla, too. And then Elvis uttered the words that stopped her heart: "She's a mama. She does the mothering. A mother is different. Once a woman is a mama, she changes." was now the Las Vegas Hilton-she was ticked off not to have been invited to Tahoe. She thought that Elvis was punis.h.i.+ng her. She'd overslept on Placydils when she was at Graceland and raced out for her plane, leaving him alone in bed. But all was forgiven. He had the flu, or at least Vegas Throat, and although he'd seen Dr. Sidney Boyer for it, he wanted to be babied. That led to a natural subject, and Joyce inquired about Lisa Marie, and about Priscilla, too. And then Elvis uttered the words that stopped her heart: "She's a mama. She does the mothering. A mother is different. Once a woman is a mama, she changes."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Well," he said, "when a woman has a child, it's a gift from G.o.d. It's G.o.d's way of telling her she's not a little girl anymore. She's grown up, you know? Now it's time to be respected and all."

Joyce wasn't following it. He didn't respect his wife until she had a baby baby?

No, no, he didn't mean it that way. He just didn't think a mother should try to be s.e.xy and attract men. "It's just not exciting and it's not supposed to be," he said frankly. "Trust me on this, Joyce. I know I'm right."

He didn't say he had no trouble with Susan Henning, and he didn't say that he was currently involved with Barbara Leigh, both of whom had a child at home.

But six days after Elvis made his declaration, Joyce sat in her doctor's office arranging to abort his child. On September 3, 1971, laying on a gurney, she was wheeled down a hospital corridor and into a bright white operating room. Everything was sterile, including the faces of the team that attended her. She felt the chemicals flow through the tubes, and then counted back, "A hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, . . ." She never told Elvis a thing.

"I was so all-consumed with him I was afraid he would leave me. And I didn't want to jeopardize my relations.h.i.+p with him, no matter what."

Within seven months she would change her mind. By the time she joined him in Las Vegas in February 1972, much had happened. She had gone on tour with him in November 1971, where she discovered that his drug use escalated to new heights on the road and made him another man.

They were in the presidential suite of Philadelphia's Bellevue Stratford Hotel the night of November 8 when he called her into the bathroom to show her how he kept his voice in shape, cupping running water in his hands and inhaling it through his nose, then violently arcing a geyser out of his mouth into the sink.

He laughed when she gave him a hard time about it and left the bathroom. But then he called her back, and when she walked to the door he was standing before her completely naked, which "blew my mind," since it was so out of character for him to show himself that way. He once told the guys, "I don't want these girls to know that I have this hillbilly p.e.c.k.e.r," referring to the fact that he was uncirc.u.mcised, and he was so modest he always slept in pajamas.

"Look at this," he said, and took hold of himself with his left hand.

"I've seen it before," she said wryly. "Are you feeling all right, Elvis?"

"I want you to watch this."

Now he pulled his foreskin back and washed himself with soap and water.

"Elvis!" she said. She couldn't believe he wanted her to witness that and turned on her heel. "I'm going back into the bedroom."

"You're not embarra.s.sed are you, baby? I just want you to know I'm clean."

It wasn't that she was embarra.s.sed so much as she was astonished. She knew it was the drugs talking, and she was beginning to get scared. Not of of him, really, but him, really, but for for him. him.

Seconds later, there was a loud knock at the door, which further surprised her, since no one had the nerve to disturb Elvis in his bedroom. But Elvis moved to answer it, as if he expected someone, and in walked a total stranger.

"Come on in, Doc," Elvis said to the man in the gray suit. He was carrying a black bag, and eyed Joyce suspiciously.

She asked why Elvis needed a doctor, and he told her it was okay. Then the doctor pulled out a rubber tube and a hypodermic needle. Elvis rolled up the sleeve of his pajama top, and the doctor tied the tube around his arm.

"Elvis, what is that? What are you taking?" Joyce was nervous. She'd never seen him do anything like that before.

"Just wait," he said. "It's okay." Then the doctor slipped the needle into his vein and slowly pushed the plunger. Joyce turned away, but Elvis said, "And give her one, too."

She jerked around just as the physician pulled out the spent syringe.

"No! No!" she cried. She jumped back a half step. "I don't want a shot of anything!"

Elvis pleaded with her. She'd feel better. It would help her sleep. They got into it then as the doctor took his leave. He wasn't going to hurt her, he said. She should know that. But what was was it? she asked. Did he even know? it? she asked. Did he even know?

"All you need to know," he told her, "is that I I say it's something you need." say it's something you need."

As the argument wound down he asked a favor of her: Would she take the used needle back home and throw it away? He didn't want anyone to find it.

When she awoke the next morning, the air conditioner was going full blast, and Elvis was as cold and clammy as the icy winter dawn, his breathing so shallow "that the incredibly handsome face seemed almost like a death mask." Joyce saw then that his innocent shots and pills could kill both of them. Certainly, he was killing himself.

He could be the most charismatic man in the world, like the time he, Joyce, Janice, and Sonny took the limo to Amy Joy's Donut Shop, an all-night drive-in in a tough part of the District where the local ghetto youth hung out. It was past 9 P.M. P.M., and Elvis didn't really eat doughnuts the way legend has it. But when he saw the sign, it just felt like a familiar thing to do, the way he used to ride around Memphis at night and stop for sacks of Krystal burgers.

The limo had barely stopped rolling when at least twenty young black men hurried over, eager to see who could be inside such a vehicle.

The situation could have flashed out of control in an instant, with Elvis, decked out in ostentatious gold chains and eye-popping rings, trapped in a limo. They were all at their mercy, and the kids could have shaken them all down, even a man as powerfully built as Sonny. The crowd swelled by the second to yells of, "HEY . . . IT'S ELVIS! C'MON MAN, THAT'S NOT . . . HEY, IT'S REALLY . . . ELVIS!"

But Elvis, who had spent his youth surrounded by girls rocking the sides of his Cadillac, took command, climbing from the car and stepping right into the throng. Sonny stood at his side, trying not to let his nervousness show.

"Whatcha doin' here, here, man," one of the youths asked. man," one of the youths asked.

"Just tryin' to get a few doughnuts," Elvis said calmly. Then he leaned down to Ben, the limo driver. "How 'bout goin' in and gettin' us three dozen?"

He straightened back up and faced his audience. Joyce and Janice were frozen in their seats, but Elvis knew what to do. "Okay, guys, keep cool . . . and pay attention now."

Slowly he pulled back his coat to reveal his ma.s.sive gold belt, gleaming as it caught the reflection from a streetlight.

"This here," he told the kids, "was a gift from the International Hotel in Las Vegas for breaking their all-time attendance record."

A chorus of "oohs" and "aahs" went up from the wide-eyed crowd, some of them moving in to get a closer look. They were pus.h.i.+ng against one another now, more excited than before.

"This belt says I'm the best . . . ," he declared. Then he grabbed the pistol out of his shoulder holster with lightning speed.

"And this this," he said, turning the gun in his hand, "says I get to keep it."

The rough ghetto kids let out a loud laugh. "Sure, man," somebody said. "It's yours. Okay, take it easy."

It was a masterly performance, and to close it, Elvis shot a curled-lip grin.

"That's it, fellas," he said, and now with Ben back in the car and the doughnuts on the seat, they sped away.

It was Joyce's favorite memory of him. But she didn't know this new Elvis. And he kept asking her to move into Graceland, where she spent his thirty-seventh birthday with him January 8, 1972, Priscilla having told him at Christmas that she was leaving. Now Elvis was finally free to be with Joyce, to really be be with her. But the idea of living with him scared her. with her. But the idea of living with him scared her.

"He was so out of control. And I needed my independence. He really wanted to take over my life, but of course, I had no control over his, and I knew there was something wrong with that thinking." She was also disappointed that while he had been "very s.e.xual, though intermittently, it didn't last."

In February, in Vegas, she realized it was impossible to make a life with him. They came from two different worlds, and she didn't want to belong to his anymore. In the ladies' room at the hotel, two hookers who told her they counted Elvis as a customer had just mistaken her for one of their own. Now she just had to get away from it all-the clothes and hair that weren't really her, the dependence on Placidyls, and being around the man who said that pills helped him get close to the "silence," to the "resting place of the soul."

From the pa.s.sages that he underlined and noted in the margins of his books, she knew he was trying to find his purpose in life. ("El," he said, was another name for G.o.d.) But when he read them aloud to her, "It drove me crazy. They didn't make any sense to me." But she did understand that "he truly ached for his brother, and he really wanted his brother to guide him from these books."